


Blooms in Frost

by Diomedes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Betrayal, Bittersweet Ending, Body Horror, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Established Relationship, Hanahaki Disease, Horror, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Marriage breakdown, Nobody Dies, Not A Fix-It, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Trope Subversion/Inversion, Unrequited Love, an ode to smoke and winter, so we've got that going for us at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26396653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diomedes/pseuds/Diomedes
Summary: Tony coughs up his first petal on the sixth of July. He has been married to the love of his life for two years.Bury a Hanahaki corpse in earth and it will beget the most beautiful garden.All that love,it is said,must go somewhere.Hanahaki AU:Established relationship------------------------------------------
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 58
Kudos: 317
Collections: Diomedes's Horror Collection





	Blooms in Frost

**Author's Note:**

> BEFORE YOU READ: this story contains fairly graphic depictions of respiratory distress which, times being what they are, some readers may wish to avoid.

It will haunt him later that the seed goes unnoticed.

The fledgling sinister blooms that will grow to consume his every moment are indistinguishable in the beginning from everyday aches and pains. His chest seizes at odd intervals and for the wrong reasons. He wakes abruptly, gasping for air, and can’t quite remember the nightmare that propelled him there. There’s a thickness at the back of his throat; easily ignored but never absent. The ghosting scent of spring permeates the bedroom. 

He coughs up a single petal on the sixth of July. It doesn’t hurt, not that first time, and the gulp of clear air after the obstruction’s passed tastes sweet. The petal is violet with a yellow tipped edge, no larger than a nickel, soft around the edges. He has no idea what kind it is, he hasn't yet learned to name the near infinite varieties.

Tony knows what the flowers mean. He looks at his husband, the love of his life, his partner of four years - 

Steve just smiles back. Tony crumples the petal in his hand.

* * *

This is what the flowers mean: _Hanahaki disease_. The rare pulmonary illness characterized by parasitic plant-like tumours growing in the lungs. The quintessential symptom is respiratory distress caused by irritation to the bronchi. The body undergoes coughing fits in an attempt to expel the irritants. 

The victims aspirate flowers. 

It’s a romantic’s disease. The old stories say that the infected die of broken hearts, that the sickness in their lungs feeds on the unrequited love of the host. The supposed cure is as simple: to have that love returned. Many a Gothic heroine has hidden her affliction until her beloved confesses his love as she lays dying on her death bed. 

The reality is harsher. Hanahaki is fatal. The blooms hog too much blood flow, too much oxygen. They eat their victims alive from the inside, turning them to mulch. Their Chosen choke on flowers, suffocating from the beauty inside them determined to be let out. They die of burst lungs, not broken hearts.

Bury a Hanahaki corpse in earth and it will beget the most beautiful garden. 

_All that love,_ it is said, _must go somewhere._

* * *

He doesn’t tell Steve because Steve is old-fashioned enough to believe the stories and there are only two ways it goes: either he’ll demand to know who it is that Tony loves so much and so fiercely he will die for them. He won’t believe it when Tony says there’s no one else. That it’s Steve. It’s always Steve. Or his husband - the man who kisses him goodbye, who makes the best pancakes, who holds him close - doesn’t love him anymore. 

Tony doesn’t want either truth. He doesn’t want to know if he’s an adulterer or a pathetic wretch.

 _I love you,_ Steve says before he leaves in the morning.

 _I love you too,_ Tony replies.

One of them is lying. Tony is dead either way.

* * *

The blooms don’t stop. The first petal is joined by a second, a fifth, a forty-sixth: a rainbow of shapes and colours and sizes. His chest aches every time. The coughing accelerates. He hacks up showers of limp, spittle-covered flora; stuffing them quickly into pockets, burying them in garbage cans. He has an alcoholic’s gift for careful deception and not one escapes his eagle eye. Steve remains loving and none the wiser and ever-growingly absent. Tony used to dread the time alone but now he counts the days, desperate for the long windows of solitude when he doesn’t have to hold his breath and pretend the truth isn’t a living thing in his chest. 

He graduates to full blossoms in mid-September. The first whole flower is the worst; he spends hours dry hacking over the sink only to finally release a small, intact marigold no bigger than a wingnut. It’s limp and deformed. Malevolent. _Sick_.

But it is beautiful too and Tony cradles it close, like an exhausted mother with a stillborn child. It is small comfort: a poor substitute for his husband’s warmth but it is here and Steve is not.

 _Mine,_ Tony thinks foggily as the blooms finally let him sleep. 

The flowers belong to him and Steve does not. 

* * *

There’s a trick to the mornings: he hunches over the edge of the bed and hyperventilates, lets his breath catch on the sails of the blossoms that grew overnight and hacks them up. Some are intact, most come out in pieces, mismatched. Bits of carnations, lavender, chrysanthemum, bittersweet, belladonna... Seven white oleander petals, half a geranium, two whole snapdragons. Tony arrays each dawn’s haul in front of him on the bedspread like a child with a collection of coins. Some of the blossoms end up preserved in formaldehyde, others are tossed down the garbage disposal. A few he carefully presses between pages of books that Steve bought and isn’t home enough anymore to read. In the silence he fancies he can hear them: the vibrating flutter of his shallow breath over the petals nestled deep in his chest, the creak of their winding roots threading through his veins. 

The blooms are supposed to mean things in the language of flowers. Pepper frantically tries to decode them: _this one is for honour or deceit, that one for mercy or inconstancy._ She may as well be deciphering tea leaves but Tony lets her voice wash over him and imagines he feels the rustling blooms settle. 

He doesn’t need an interpreter, he knows what message they are meant to convey: _He doesn’t love you. Not anymore._

Tony doesn’t know what changed.

* * *

 _Is there someone else?_ he asks. He is not quite brave enough to put the question to Steve so he asks Natasha instead. 

She knows what he means. _No._

Her beautiful eyes glimmer. Tony believes her. 

Natasha doesn’t lie when she doesn’t have to; not when the truth will hurt him just as much.

* * *

The most unbearable part turns out not to be the restless nights or the coughing fits. It’s the smell.

Every breath he takes causes the blossoms to ripple, the esters tickling his nose from the inside. He reeks of amaryllis, of lilies, of hydrangeas. Everything tastes bad when the rhododendron is so heavy in your nostrils you can taste it but it goes well with gin. From then on he prides himself on the optimal drink pairing for every brand of loneliness. Morning glories favour a pinot grigio, columbines a good Kentucky bourbon. Aloe loves a Long Island iced tea. The floral scent leaks out of his pores, overwhelming the alcohol on his breath. 

_You smell good,_ Steve says, hugging him close after his return.

 _New cologne,_ Tony murmurs, his 5-year sobriety chip resting next to the begonias in the dumpster.

Steve isn’t around enough anymore to catch the lie.

* * *

Tony is a walking sack of blood-and-bone meal; Mister Miracle-Gro. 

The blooms are anchored his lungs, basking in his unrequited love like it’s sunlight. Their veins intertwine with his like highwaymen, robbing him of water and oxygen. Their taproots burrow into his bones, greedily sucking minerals from marrow. Their roots wind themselves around his organs, weakening his already taxed liver. The only part of him the blooms leave untouched is his heart; it’s breaking on its own, no intervention needed. The flowers are a parasite he can’t eradicate without killing himself. He can’t starve them out and the drinking does more harm to himself than to them. He understands the impulse to inhale bleach - anything to rob the little buggers of the satisfaction of getting out alive after they’ve strangled him dead. Instead he takes up smoking for the simple pleasure of imagining after each slow drag that the flowers in his lungs are burning. 

There’s no way of knowing how long the blooms will draw his death out. Some Hanahaki cases go quickly, for others it takes years - for a select few, decades - but they all die in the end. There are no recorded survivors; only anecdotal evidence of miraculous recoveries. It’s difficult to scientifically test if true love’s first kiss really undoes the spell. For those outside the fairytale it’s left to suffer unto death for the whims of the heart.

Tony coughs up flowers and counts down blooms and wonders abstractly what happens when the last petal falls. When his lung capacity diminishes bit by bit until he suffocates under the weight of the bouquet in his chest. When beauty finally wins over the beast and the autopsy splits open his ribcage to reveal Eden.

He wonders if Steve will still love him enough to mourn.

* * *

 _Is it Pepper?_ Rhodey asks when it’s well past time he knew.

 _No._ Tony waits for the conclusion to hit.

Rhodey’s expression hardens. _I’ll kill him._

 _Don’t do that,_ Tony says softly, _I’ll definitely die if he’s too dead to love me back._ He tries to smile. _Besides, it’s not his fault. It’s mine. There’s nothing wrong with not loving me. Might be a sign of sanity to be honest._

Rhodey exhales rapidly and Tony marvels at the ease. He slides sheets of medical proxy legalese across the table. He trusts Steve to do right by him but not in this final request.

 _Promise you’ll cremate me,_ Tony says, serious. _I don’t want to be the war-profiteering asshole who got what he deserved for cheating on his perfect husband or whatever story the tabloids invent. And I don’t want my grave desecrated by newlyweds traipsing through my Hanahaki garden to take photos._ He rubs a hand over his chest. _If you want to avenge me, burn these suckers to ash._

 _I can’t promise I won’t add Steve to the pyre,_ Rhodey warns. 

_If you’re taking requests: burn anyone who shows up with a wreath. Or a bouquet, or corsage -_

_I promise to cremate you like Darth Vader on Endor,_ Rhodey says gravely, finishing his signature with a flourish, _and God help any little ewoks who get in my way._

Rhodey smiles, eyes shining with unshed tears, and Tony cackles until he chokes, desperately gasping for air. 

He thinks the actual worst part of this whole sodden affair is how the blooms have robbed him of the simple joy of laughter.

* * *

He forgets sometimes that he’s still alive, still married. 

_Are we okay? You and me?_ Tony asks over the phone when there is a safe hundred miles between them. 

_Of course, I’m just tired,_ Steve’s voice creaks. 

The champagne has made Tony brave. _Why don’t I come up to the Compound, visit everyone?_

 _Don’t. We leave for Brazil tomorrow._ There’s a split second pause. _Listen, I know I’ve been away a lot and just - thank you for understanding. I’ll be home soon and we’ll talk and it’ll all be over. I love you._

 _I love you too,_ Tony parrots back. 

_Wait for me?_ Steve pleads. 

Tony twirls the purple anemone between his fingers. _For as long as I can._

* * *

At Stage 4 there is nothing left to be done medically and old wives’ tales are all Tony has left. He just has to get his husband to love him like he used to. Even if it seems like Steve already does. Steve comes home and makes an effort. He compliments Tony, he makes love to him, comforts him. When he leaves apologetically for a mission, it’s the job they both signed up for. Tony doesn’t know what’s missing; what he’s misplaced. 

He sets out to seduce Steve all over again with art galleries, good food, and great sex. With gadgets and donations and gifts. Steve smiles in all the right places, he’s appropriately grateful. When they hold hands Tony can feel Steve’s wedding ring against his fingers. It’s like the good ole days except for the lingering perfume of flowers ever lurking in the background.

He forgets about the blooms until the morning after when they’re tangled up in bed, Steve’s heartbeat steady beneath him. He can feel the petals threatening his throat, his thoracic cavity feels stuffed as he rushes to the bathroom. The large rose comes out easily enough but it’s not alone and Tony pulls the long trailing stem out of his own windpipe like a tapeworm. Its thorns catch on the sides of his trachea, drawing blood that he aspirates onto the mirror. 

_Honey?_ Steve asks from behind the locked door. 

Tony looks at himself in the blood-speckled mirror. The dark crimson rose is stained with splatters of red. _I’ll be right out._

When he exits Steve is in the kitchen making him pancakes with a soft, familiar smile.

Tony doesn’t understand how he’s dying from this.

* * *

His collection of perfect specimens increases as the sickness within him grows. By the time his birthday rolls around his daily haul produces enough intact blossoms to make his own bouquet. He arranges them in a round, glass vase; a carpet of flowers floating on water. His death jar: a record of love unrequited. 

_They’re beautiful,_ Steve murmurs.

 _They’re for you,_ Tony confesses. 

_You’re such a romantic,_ Steve whispers into his ear, missing the hollowness in Tony’s eyes, _but it’s your birthday, what should I get the man who has everything?_

 _Save me,_ Tony thinks. 

_Love me?_ he asks aloud.

Steve nuzzles into the crook of his neck. _You know I do._

The bouquet mocks him as he lets Steve take him apart and put him back together as faulty as when he started. Tony’s chest aches and it’s nothing to do with the passenger he carries with him.

The flowers in the vase only last three days. Steve is gone again before the last one dies. 

* * *

In the end Steve does save him.

Tony only realizes it in retrospect; after a shield’s been driven into his chest, after _did you know_ and _he’s my friend_ , and the sting of being left behind. Hanahaki is the disease of the lovelorn and Steve reached deep down into Tony’s lungs and tore any such love out by the root. 

His doctors have never seen anyone survive advanced Hanahaki. They debate if it was the acute trauma to his chest or the prolonged exposure to the cold Siberian air that turned it around. Tony doesn’t tell them what he suspects is the truth: that he may still feel pangs for the man who was his husband but their relationship is dead and the blooms know the season’s turning. The frost in Tony’s heart is growing steadily, settling into his bones. He hasn’t been cured by the warmth of love but by the cold harsh truth: Steve doesn’t love him. He stopped awhile ago. If the lie was a forerunner or a consequence is moot. 

The blossoms Tony coughs up these days are already dead: decaying brown petals, withering already. Flowers after first frost. 

His heart will heal. His lungs will empty.

He will live.

* * *

Here is the unromantic’s view of Hanahaki’s disease: 

The blooms aren’t a parasite, they’re a reminder: _Love is beautiful and beautiful things can kill you._ But the kind of soul who loves for nothing in return is the kind that lets love suffocate them instead of relearning how to breathe. You do not die of the blossoms in your lungs, you die of a life spent on someone unable to repay you in kind. In some ways it is easier to endure a slow, brutal death than to give up a fantasy that sustains you. The blooms simply force your hand. Until then they treat you as what you are: dead already. Fertilizer.

The flowers are a warning: _Don’t waste your life._

* * *

The last whole blossom Tony coughs up is in November after weeks of only stray petals. It’s a tiny, white poppy, malnourished and wilting. The stubby roots trail behind having found no purchase in the flesh below. It is the last, lonely, pitiful flower on the vine; a late bloomer. It is still beautiful though, and it would have made for the most beautiful, senseless death. 

He crushes it in his palm and washes it down the sink drain along with all the alcohol in the penthouse and his wedding ring. 

Outside the leaves are turning. Winter is coming. 

Tony can’t wait.

* * *

Tony arrives at the cemetery to find his fugitive ex-husband has already dusted the snow off the gravestones. He waits for the sight of Steve Rogers to take his breath away but there is nothing but an ache behind his eyes; suppressed tears or a budding migraine or the pain of staring into the sun. 

_I’m sorry,_ Steve says brokenly, breath fogging in the cold. He’s clutching a bouquet tight to his chest, an offering to lay at the graves of those he has trespassed. 

The floral fragrance only reminds Tony of death. _For my parents or for pretending you loved me?_

There’s a familiar flare of self-righteous anger. _I always loved you._

Tony laughs, unobstructed and free. _No. You didn’t._

Steve deflates. He looks unwell; pale and concave. _I didn’t love you the way I should have but it was never a lie. It took Siberia for me to realize what I’d done and how much you meant to me._

 _It took Siberia for me to realize what I meant to you too,_ Tony replies and there is old, worn bitterness underneath. Steve fell back in love at the same time he made sure Tony could never love him again. Maybe to survive Hanahaki you need both. Maybe that’s why so many die. 

_I love you,_ Steve says miserably.

 _I loved you too,_ Tony answers.

 _I won’t give up,_ Steve says ferociously because he loves like that. Violently and only after people he’s already lost.

Tony stares into the sun. _Then you’re going to be waiting a long time._

 _You’re worth it,_ Steve chokes. 

Tony realizes Steve _could_ wait. He is determined and hard-headed and could bear the tragedy of love for decades. He could keep the candle burning no matter how much it cost him. He would be Hanahaki’s perfect host: the serum would keep him alive to bloom forever, coughing up flowers like a never-ending fountain. Never to laugh again, never to sleep through the night. Steve wouldn’t get a beautiful death, but a beautiful life filled with nothing but suffering and he would bear it all for love. 

But not for Tony.

Steve stopped loving Tony easily enough before and he will do so again no matter how vehemently he denies it. He won’t even need a fairytale illness to force his hand. Tony doubts he’ll mourn for long. Wakanda doesn’t get snow.

Steve’s still wearing his wedding ring and a year ago Tony would have been the romantic. Now all he sees is a man trying to plant a seed in anemic soil. Their relationship is dead and Tony doesn’t want to water it back to life because he knows it will consume him in a way that it never will Steve. He fears being subject to the whims of a husband he no longer trusts. He fears the blooms snaking their way back. He fears their punishment for ignoring their warning.

 _I love you,_ Steve repeats like he would know the truth from a lie.

Tony shakes his head. _‘This too shall pass.’_

Blue eyes close, resigned. _It won’t._

Tony takes the bouquet from Steve’s hands. Purple hyacinth and white tulips and primrose. _Regret_ and _apologies_ and _declarations of love_. Steve chose them well but Tony reads the easier message. The flowers are dead, Steve only ever brings him corpses. They won’t grow, nothing does here in the winter. The clipped blossoms will die abandoned on the rock, crystallizing in the cold. It’s warmer than Siberia.

 _They’re for you._ Steve clears his throat and croaks, _I need to tell you -_

Tony takes the cigarette lighter from his pocket and flicks the flame. It takes the bouquet awhile to catch, the flowers are too stubborn at first - of course Steve bought the fresh ones - but the newsprint they’re wrapped in burns easily and soon the cloying floral scent is covered by the smell of smoke. Tony dumps the torch onto his mother’s gravestone and retreats to watch his marriage dissolve on a stone altar. A burnt offering: ash and flame and cremation. He fancies he can hear the flowers screaming. 

_What did you want to tell me?_ Tony asks without turning around, still hypnotized by the flames.

Steve’s breath catches, a sob stuck in his throat. _Nothing important._ He steps forward and drops a forgotten cyclamen onto the pyre.

The grey wisps of smoke rise to the heavens. It smells acrid, awful and wonderful, like aftermath and catharsis. The wind blows a billow of smoke into Tony’s face and suddenly there’s cleansing fire in his lungs, burning him from the inside out, and then - 

It’s over. 

Tony inhales the crisp, cold air and thinks he never gave winter its due. 

Steve coughs. Tony doesn’t. 

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody dies but depending on whether you think Steve has Hanahaki in the cemetery it's not a happy ending. In case it’s not obvious I hate the smell of flowers and really like the smell of smoke. I was procrastinating writing my other story and spent a couple days putting this together instead. How is this not the most frightening trope on the planet? 
> 
> More of my dark/horror one-shots can be found here: [Diomedes's Horror Collection](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Diomedes_horror_works)
> 
> Flowers can have several meanings each: some positive, some negative. Good luck decoding. 
> 
> Comments are welcome and appreciated.
> 
>  **Tony's Flowers:**  
>  _Marigold_ \- grief, jealousy  
>  _Oleander_ \- caution  
>  _Germanium_ \- folly  
>  _Snapdragon_ \- deception  
>  _Hydrangea_ \- heartlessness  
>  _Begonia_ \- beware  
>  _Rhododendron_ \- danger  
>  _Anemone_ -forsaken, sickness  
>  _Crimson Rose_ \- mourning  
>  _White Poppy_ \- eternal sleep, oblivion, consolation
> 
>  **Steve's bouquet:**  
>  _Purple Hyacinth_ \- please forgive me, sorrow  
>  _White Tulip_ \- I'm sorry  
>  _Primrose_ \- I can't live without you  
>  _Cyclamen_ \- resignation, good-bye


End file.
